


it happens like so

by scattered_autumn



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: M/M, actually its pretty obvious, ambiguous ending, and artistic, hope yall like it tho, jaehyun doing a lot of thinking, kind of, me using jaehyun to express my love for hyuck, shorts about life, trying to be philosophical, what it is im implying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:02:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22781428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scattered_autumn/pseuds/scattered_autumn
Summary: Jaehyun contemplates certain periods of his life (and a certain person that he meets).Alternatively:The misshapen collection of thoughts and moments that make up our precious memories.
Relationships: Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Lee Donghyuck | Haechan
Comments: 2
Kudos: 50





	it happens like so

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first fic (that I've ever posted)  
> It's bad, ngl, but it has firstborn status so I love it for now.

1.

The first time they meet is blurry. That day had passed with little occasion. The new batch of trainees had come with expectations, who’ve worked so hard for the opportunity just to step foot in the training rooms. Most will likely drop out soon though, either due to stress or failure. It’s a slow, draining process, this path to debut. Most of them will not make it. The day is just like any other for him. But to show courtesy, Jaehyun smiles and introduces himself. They’re all so young, he thinks to himself. 

_Are they ready? Do they know what to expect?_

There comes face after face, hand after hand that he’s shaking, until it all blends together. 

Finally, somewhere after the kid with glasses and a nervous smile, a small, tanned hand enters his view. His palms are slightly sweaty, but his hand is warm, and so is his smile. Jaehyun swears he feels the sun shine down upon his face for a moment, as if they were no longer in the confines of the training room, with artificial fluorescent lighting shining down upon him.

“My name is Donghyuck,” he says. His voice is high-pitched and melodic, and the way he speaks is reminiscent of honey or syrup, something viscous that drags along the consonants and vowels until it blends together into a word.

(I’m going to debut is what his eyes say. They are ablaze with ambition, his entire being is alight, and Jaehyun could bask in that confidence)

”I’m Jaehyun.”

And so it begins.

2.

"One, two, three and four and," the dance instructor's voice thunders across the room and Jaehyun feels sweat drip down from his forehead, make its way across the edges and panes of his face, until it nestles itself in the curve of his neck. All around him is the sound of heavy breathing, the slapping of shoe soles hitting the ground and coming up again. It's all movement, no rest, feet coming up as soon as they touch down.

One, two, three, four. The beat embeds itself in his head.

Faster, slower, arms out of place, dance lines awkward, feet shuffling, lost his place.

He's caught up in this world, made of constant movement but sometimes he can't catch up. Once he makes the mistake of looking up past his body, and sees the dozens of tired faces that match his own. For a moment he marvels at the sight.

These are all the people running towards the same goal.

_These are all of your competitors,_ a voice remarks in his head.

He's lagging behind again. The dance instructor gives a cursory glance and pauses on him for a moment.

With renewed vigor, he continues.

_One, two, three, four._

3.

Some days, tiredness catches up to him and clings on tight, winds its way into the folds at the corners of his eyes and into his voice and seeps into his bones. Some days, he feels invincible, adrenaline running through his blood as he sings like his life depends on it, because this _is_ his life. 

Some days he wants to lie down and grow cold, wants to sink into the hardwood floors that has carried the sweat and tears of every trainee that has come before and after him. He wants to scream at his reflection in the mirror, at the sky outside the walls, into the Seoul skyline covered in a haze of fine dust. 

_Hear me. Know I exist._

It would be cathartic, and satisfy the numbing feeling that has taken a grip of his reality recently. There's a cycle that he's running through, like the five stages of grief, though he's not sure what it is that he's grieving for. When he closes his eyes and open them again, he's still there. This is the training room, and there's the mirror with a scratch on it when one of the trainees accidentally hit it while performing a flip (really though, why did he do it so close to the wall?) and then on the floor a dent (he's not sure where that came from) and when he looks straight into the mirror at the front of the room he's met with brown eyes and honey skin and that face, constantly stuck between a smile and a smirk, eyes squinting in delight and a challenge.

"Donghyuck," he acknowledges with a nod.

The other is silent for a moment.

"Jaehyun hyung." 

_What are you doing?_ The question hangs in the air for a moment, where he lets it sit. He wishes there was a window to let in the breeze, fine dust or not. He wishes to see the sun set and fill the room with colors and brilliance. There are many things he wishes for, and he lets them all run through his head and fill up the space between them.

_What am I doing? I wish I knew._

Instead, he gives him a smile.

"Is there anything you need?" He asks, taking a few steps to collect his water bottle and jacket before he turns, ready to answer a question like a helpful senior and walk away.

Donghyuck gives him a look, and despite his youthful appearance and soft features, Jaehyun feels like he's being examined by someone with years to rival his own. It's the look of someone who thinks so much, has thoughts constantly running behind smiles and loud laughter, but never expresses them outright. Then, in a flash, that feeling is gone. In its place is a grin, and a soft "no"

As he approaches the door, Jaehyun almost turns to ask him-something, anything.

When he pauses with a hand on the handle, he can't think of anything. Behind him, music is beginning to pick up from the speakers. There is the thump of feet on the floor, the squeaking sound of rubber sliding across waxed floors.

He leaves the room, the walls painted in brilliant colors.

4.

They see each other again sometimes, in the hallways, surrounded by the other Rookies. He's always laughing, with others and sometimes at others (most often at Mark) and Jaehyun isn't sure how he feels.

_How can you be so happy?_ He sometimes wishes to ask.

He looks on from a distance, and feels stifled. He wants to laugh like that, laugh with his entire being. But there is the pressure of debut, and he's not sure what lies in the future. He wonders if he was too impulsive. It's hard to shine, it's hard to make himself known when the entire room is filled with brilliance. He has his own light in the corner, and he's cupped his hands around it to protect it from the jostling shoulders and playful teasing. It warms his palms, but everything else feels frozen.

Time is passing by slowly again.

It's cold in the morning and he wakes up freezing despite the blankets. The chill followed him through his morning routine, repelled the warmth of his coffee, rendering his face stuck in some neutral expression that warned the others off.

Eventually he talks some, and laughs at a bad joke, because life goes on when he can't remember what life entails.

There's a message on his phone that he hasn't opened yet. It's from his mother. 

It was one of those days that passed extra slowly, and he made a mistake during dance practice again because of course he did, and his voice cracked while singing and his face looked ugly when he was brushing his teeth in the morning and he's young and naive and overwhelmed by the world.

He can't bear to open the message.

Perhaps it was to ask whether he ate already. Perhaps she wanted to know how her only son was doing, felt worried, missed him. 

He can't face that at the moment, because he knows that to open that message is to remember the world outside of the SM building. He will open that message and regret it because that numb feeling will be replaced with sadness, and his face won't betray him but his heart will, and maybe his eyes will water slightly.

Today is a long day.

He can't imagine facing tomorrow.

5.

Eventually he makes it past those days and they fall prey to the foggy past. One day he might forget what exactly it was that happened that day, and one day he may remember nothing at all of his past.

What he does know now is that he is no longer Rookie Jaehyun. He is NCT Jaehyun, NCT U Jaehyun, NCT 127 Jaehyun. His name has not changed and he doesn't feel that he has either, really. He's not quite sure what he had expected. Something more magical, perhaps. What he does know is that now he's completely exposed to the public eye, now everything he does is judged, now he has to be careful where he treads and even more careful about what he says. Don't wear this, don't do this, don't look like this. It's the most "don't"'s he's heard since childhood, when everything was new and waiting to be explored. Maybe his age is getting to him now, though. He doesn't quite feel like trying anything new, for fear of unknown consequences.

It's fine though. He's happy now anyways, happier than he has been in years.

He has his members with him now, and he hopes to walk this path with them for a while.

There's Mark, Taeyong, Doyoung and Taeil, Yuta, Sicheng, Johnny (and he doesn't know it now but later a boy with a kind smile and soft voice will join and complete them. His name is Jungwoo).

And there's Haechan.

Haechan, not Donghyuck.

He can't quite recall when the name started to stick in his own mind. The first one he meets will always be Donghyuck, who shakes his hand with a confidence that lasts, who laughs and breathes ambition.

Haechan is new. Haechan is charismatic, and Haechan has an elegance that only peaked its head out when he was Donghyuck, but now it's out in full force and it's beautiful but blinding.

Donghyuck is still there, though. He sees him when he's talking with Jaemin and Jeno, the 00 liners having fun in their own little world. He wonders what it feels like for him, to be living as one person but distinguished almost as if NCT Haechan was different from Rookie Donghyuck.

_How is it?_ He wonders.

He won't receive a reply until much later.

6.

They are dorm roommates, and he settles into this lifestyle easily. Haechan stays awake until ungodly hours, face illuminated by the bright screen that accentuates the dark moles lining his neck, looking like an inverted galaxy. There are no windows here either, but strangely he doesn't mind when he has a view of the world anyways. It's of a boy wearing rounded glasses which slip down the slope of his nose every once in a while. Like a game, it slips and slips until it seems it's about to fall off, before he finally pushes it back up, where the cycle begins again.

Jaehyun thinks he can get used to this.

It's quiet save for the excited yells from the desk, but he's okay with that too. It fills the room with a sort of life that he wasn't used to, because most of the people he shared rooms with before were leaning towards the reserved side, limiting their presence until it seemed they were living in solitary. All of a sudden now, the room felt full. There was a presence that would not be forgotten, that would not let itself be forgotten. Jaehyun is happy to see it, to indulge in it. It's like the silver wrapped chocolate that he used to hide under his bed, which he hoarded greedily, yet was too reluctant to eat. There's something special about sharing a room, because the place where people rest is where you see them best. He likes to imagine that this side of Haechan is unique to himself, at least for now.

He considers it a blessing.

The red glare of digital clock at the bedside table shifts patterns as the time changes. Jaehyun watches drowsily. 9:00, 10:00, 11:00...

At some point, he falls asleep, gaze alternating between red and the universe.

When he wakes up, the dorm is silent. Turning around, he spots a lump under the sheets in the bed next to his. Dark brown hair, slightly curly, peeks out and contrasts against the bleached white sheets. The person it belongs to is nicely hidden away from the world, a treasure to be uncovered. 

He hopes this treasure is discovered and valued the way it should be. Too many times the earth covers up gold and drags it down into its embrace, until even the people who buried it are no longer able to find it. He prays that this will not be the case.

Some treasures are meant to be admired by many.

He thinks he's found one of them. How lucky, how awe-inspiring.

With utmost caution he gets out of bed, brushes his teeth and washes his face, changes before slipping out the door.

Once again, he pauses with a hand on the handle.

Once again, he leaves.

7.

Time is passing quickly now, because comebacks are nipping at his heels now instead of monthly evaluations. He's constantly tired, but he feels alive.

_This is worth it. He reminds himself why he struggled so hard, for this taste of success, for the crowds, for the performance. He's been working for so long towards a dream that he thought was flying away from him. But he grew wings and flew after it, flew up. He is his own Icarus, and he's seen the sun and longs for it, but he is an Icarus that heeds warnings. There is a sun but he does not fly towards it, only alongside it._

Which is what he believes.

But sometimes, after the computer screen shuts off in their room, if by chance he's still awake, he'll lie in bed and listen to the rustling of sheets beside him. There's the sound of tossing and turning, before finally there's a creak and the sound of padding footsteps that arrive at the side of his bed.

"Hyung, can I sleep here tonight?"

He could make a comment about how he is sleeping here already, that they share a room, that his question is incorrect. He can tease him, if he so wishes.

He doesn't wish to though. _He wants this as well_.

There is no worded reply. He merely raises the sheets and shivers slightly as cold air rushes in, then shivers a bit more when a body slips in next to him, radiating warmth.

_Like the sun. My sun._

Slowly, cautiously, Haechan moves his arms, awkwardly at first as if he's afraid to touch, before an arms lands between them and then a head nestles onto the arm. Soft exhales brush against his collarbone. The chill is completely gone, and in its place is warmth. Jaehyun lies there, almost holding his breath, and he thinks about his little light. He used to be afraid it would go out. Now, in the dark room, it seems to light everything up. It's being fed, slowly but surely, and he'll continue working hard until that light can match the one lying beside him, his own piece of the universe.

For now though, he times his breath and lulls his heart into a calm pattern.

In his sleep, he dreams of a room washed white and covered in reflections. There's a giant window where one of the walls should be, and the sun is peaking out. Red, orange, yellow, blue, they run and spin around him, and it's exhilarating. When he looks out, he sees the sun.

He thinks his wings are strong enough to begin the journey now.

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies for the abrupt ending. I can't help but feel there could have been more, but there's just so much else I must attend to. Anyways, this was my attempt to shower some love on the jaehyuck tag because jaehyuck is an underrated ship and needs to be fed.


End file.
